Highway-rail grade crossings are a major safety concern for governments, the railway and general transportation industries, communities, and common citizens. Many accidents happen around the world each year and many lives are lost in these accidents. Governments, local communities, and railway companies spend millions of dollars each year improving the safety of highway-rail crossings.
Methods such as laser beam scanning, ultrasonic wave reflection, video cameras, etc. have been used for detecting objects at highway-rail crossings. However, none of these provide effective solutions. For example, a common shortcoming for all of these is that the sensitivity and accuracy are greatly reduced during bad weather conditions. In addition, effective video techniques require human observation at all times.
In this invention, the inventor proposes to use sensors (such as pressure gauges, electrical/mechanical strain gauges, or fiber optic sensors) under the pavement or another platform at a railway grade crossing to detect objects that are stationary in or moving across the grade crossing. With this approach, the presence of such an object triggers a warning signal that the engineer of an approaching train can receive visually or via a telecommunications channel at a safe distance, and take appropriate action if the object is not out of the crossing within a safe period of time.